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By Miriam Raftery
September 8, 2014 (La Mesa)--Executives of a company that hired a man with no tree trimming experience to trim a towering eucalyptus tree may soon stand trial for the man’s death.
A large branch came loose and struck Joshua Pudsey in the head outside a La Mesa home, killing him. The accident actually occurred this past November.
Three Frogs Incorporated, a real estate company in La Mesa, and three of its executives now face criminal charges of violating federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration, or OSHA standards, as well as unemployment insurance fraud and failing to have workers’ compensation insurance.
Those charged are the company’s president, David Scott Wolfe, financial officer Jonathan Cox and chief operating officer John Murphy. A preliminary hearing is underway this week to determine whether they will face trial.
Large fines of $90,000 or more have also been levied against the company. It is illegal in California for a firm to have a tree over 15 feet tall trimmed without a qualified tree expert on the job. Pudsey also had no safety harness, the UT San Diego has reported.
10 News reports that the victim’s mother, Debbi Anderson, told the court that her son was a tile layer and painter who had never trimmed a tree before—except on the day before his fatal accident. He expressed fears after his first trimming assignment and promised his mother he would not get into the tree again, she testified. She believes he was pressured into again working on the towering tree, which stood 30 to 40 feet tall.
Joshua Pudsey was not a licensed contractor and the plastic hat he wore proved inadequate to protect him.
If convicted, the company’s executives could be sentenced to up to six and a half years in prison.
But for the victim’s family, their pain will last a lifetime.
His fiance was pregnant when the tragedy occurred and has since given birth to a son, now three months old, who will never meet his father.
His family has set up a Facebook page for friends of Joshua Pudsey to post memories so that his son, Jackson Joshua Pudsey, “can know what his daddy meant to everyone he touched.”
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